Saturday, January 16, 2010

For those of you who do not know, I was born and raised a few short years in Queens New York. As most of America and parts of the world, are very well acquainted with this less than stellar accent that one acquires coming from Queens. Living in the "burbs" of Long Island just made a bad thing worse. With all of that said, it took a VERY long time to lose that rather abrasive accent. Whadareyoutawkinabouwt! I don’t got no accent (hee hee hee).

As I got on the W train from Lexington and 59th street heading into Astoria/Queens I felt that warm feeling of home, the thought of going to a Greek restaurant and having those amazing frappes (iced coffees) was very exciting. It did seem a rather odd place to have a first "meeting" with yet another man to potentially date. This guy was from Long Island and as many of my friends know the only way I go to LI is for holidays with the family, weddings or funerals. After growing up there I can honestly say not a place I am going back to for a "date". Anyway who wants to put that much time, effort and cost into some random guy that you meet off an internet dating site that has as one of its dating type categories "sexual encounters". So we decided we would meet in Queens as a middle ground. From what I am told Astoria has become a little more hipster but not the neighborhood I was in none of the groovy new restaurants or bars that I had been reading about.

Putting all those thoughts aside and listening yet again to my friends to keep an open mind about dating and men I decided to get back on the dating track with “the trainer".

Let’s face it people I like men with good bodies, don't have to be great but I like muscles and I like guys that take the time to work out. If you are flabby and out of shape I am not interested and never will be. Shallow you may say however, if I am busting my ass in the gym 3x/week to feel and look good than I am certainly not hanging on the arm of a guy that is a couch potato or 20 lbs overweight. So I decided to go out with the LI guy with the very thick Queens accent who is a trainer and triathlete. By his picture he had an amazing body and anyone that has that much determination to be a triathlete is someone I want to meet even just for coffee.

"The trainer" recommended Queens as he was originally from there so I thought great he will recommend a good restaurant for drinks or coffee. Not so I schlep out to Astoria Queens to end up sitting in one of those loathsome Starbucks. I try to make it a point not to go to Starbucks but to support my neighborhood coffee shops. Here I am in Astoria in a Starbucks to come face to face with a man that looks hmmm plastic! He had a mouthful of capped teeth that looked exactly like my dad's. Needless to say it was over before it even started. For 2 hours I listened to this man talk about his very very small world. It is true that you know within 3 seconds if you are attracted to someone. I should have left after 20 minutes but the man would not stop talking. He did seem to have a good physique but that is it were it ended for me. After about my third yawn I said I really had to go and he kindly walked me to the subway which of course I told him was completely unnecessary. Yet another unsuccessful first meeting, I have to be more effective with my phone interview process with these men. If I really paid more attention on the phone I would have never agreed to meet this guy. It is hard for me to reject people. This really was a mercy date because I really do not have the skill to say thank you but no thank you. I guess yet another challenge the universe is putting in front of me to work on. I have decided to lay off the dating sites for awhile as Spring is coming and I am hoping something will happen organically like it use to when men weren't afraid to ask a woman out. Now it seems not only do we have to take home the bacon, fry it up in the pan, but we have to go out find a man club him over the head and drag him to the cave. Why am I doing this again?? Oh yeah companionship and .....

I will fill you in further on my past on-line dating experiences as one was unbelievable even for me.